Matrix Games Forums

Just curious...are there any guidelines for determining Complexity and Difficulty when you are writing scenarios? Or is it simply based on your gut feeling about how complicated and hard the scenario is when you are writing and testing it?

No one has responded to this, so I will submit my ideas about how to do this...

Complexity 1 = Blue controls less than 5 units
Complexity 2 = Blue controls 5 to 20 units
Complexity 3 = Blue controls 20 to 50 units
Complexity 4 = Blue controls 50 to 200 units (e.g., typical CVBG)
Complexity 5 = Blue controls more than 200 units (e.g., multiple carrier battle groups)

Note: Units means something where the player has to make decisions, like planes or submarines or AAA units; one does not have to include things like hangers or runways in the count.

Difficulty 1 = Blue superiority in numbers and/or quality of units makes victory likely
Difficulty 2 = Blue and Red are roughly matched in numbers and/or quality of units
Difficulty 3 = Red has some advantage over Blue in numbers and/or quality of units
Difficulty 4 = Red has a significant advantage over Blue in numbers and/or quality of units
Difficulty 5 = Blue victory is unlikely

This can be modified for special factors (e.g., Red only has to achieve a small amount of damage to gain a political victory over Blue, etc.)

Any thoughts on this?

This is very personnal, I ask myself this question each time I write an scenario....

Your scale seems to be reasonable as a general idea, then special factors need to be taken into account (don't forget here how much ammo available to achieve the goals). It would be interesting to create a standard for this.

Btw Mark, I sent you a PM in the Warfaresims forum.

It's subjective, certainly. For me, difficulty is how hard I think a given scenario is. Complexity is how many units and the nuances of the victory conditions in a scenario.